Abstract

Islam et al.¹ have proposed logic gates based on soliton dragging. These gates work as follows: two pulses of different polarization may initially overlap—a signal pulse and a control pulse. These pulses are not really solitons as their amplitude-to-width ratios are not correct: typically, A_c ~1.1 and A_s~0.5, where these values refer to the amplitudes of the control and signal pulses, normalized with respect to the soliton amplitudes. However, their amplitudes are large enough for the Kerr effect to act and shift the central frequencies of the signal and control pulse if they initially overlap. After the partial collision, the control pulse hasa central frequency that is different from what it would have been had there been no collision, and its velocity is altered owing to chromatic dispersion in the fiber. Consequently, the central pulse is dragged from the time slot it would have occupied had there been no interaction. The signal pulse is discarded with a polarizing filter, and the control pulse becomes the signal pulse for the next stage.

© 1991 Optical Society of America